Is Tomcat an Application Server or Webserver

[sai prasanna]

Hi all
Is Tomcat an Application Server or Webserver what is the main difference
between them please explain?

Thanks in advance
saiprasanna

[Ben Souther]

The short answer is "Both".

Tomcat is a servlet container that can also be run as a standalone webserver.

The distinctions between these terms is a bit blurry but here is
a rough description.

Appserver: Java term for an application that runs J2EE applications.

This includes EJB, Servlets, JNDI, JSP, and more..

Servlet Container: The part of an appserver that handles Servlets (most have JSP compilers built in With some, you have to pay more for this).

Webserver: An application running on a machine that handles HTTP requests.

Originally, these only handled static files and maybe CGI scripts.


Tomcat can either be bound to an external webserver (such as Apache HTTPD or Microsoft IIS) but can also run as a stand-alone Webserver/Servlet container/JSP engine. It can also be embedded into a full Appserver such as JBoss.

[Jaime M. Tovar]

I think it only qualifies as a web container. Here you can find more info about a web container. Web Container

[Bear edit: fixed gnarly formatting issues]
[ December 04, 2005: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Bear Bibeault]

You can certainly call it a web container. But that doesn't mean you cannot call it anything else; the terms are not precisely defined.